I love the integrated podcatcher in iTunes, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to rate podcast episodes while listening to them on my iPod. No matter what I do, clicking the select button 2-3 times brings up the show description instead of the rating screen. I can’t figure out a way to edit or erase the show description from iTunes. I even tried writing an AppleScript to erase the description, which compiles and runs, but doesn’t seem to work. I’m beginning to think that maybe Apple rushed podcatching into iTunes a little too quickly. To test my hypothesis, I’m now trying out iPodder. (Whoops, it’s just been renamed Juice.) It has some drawbacks, but at least I can access the rating screen while listening to a podcast on my iPod now!
There are some great features of the iTunes podcatcher that iPodder is missing:
- Bookmarking–Everything I’ve downloaded so far hasn’t been bookmarkable. This is pretty easy to correct, just set “Remember playback position” setting under track options in iTunes. I’d prefer to have iPodder do this automatically, or at the very least have an AppleScript command for this.
- Ignoring podcasts when shuffling–Another easy fix, just set “Skip when shuffling” under track options. Again, it’d be ideal if iPodder handled this, or an AppleScript.
- Auto-stopping at end of show. Sometimes I find this a helpful feature, and sometimes I think it’s a bug. Podcasts that I download via the iTunes podcatcher will auto-stop at the end of the episode. This is handy because it prevents the next episode from automatically being played (and thereby having its status changed from “unplayed” to “played”, i.e. ready for deletion). I’m not too concerned about this yet, since I’m manually deleting podcasts anyway, but this is something I would like to be able to control. I just don’t know what setting handles this.
I’ve written a little AppleScript to take care of the bookmarkable and shufflable settings, but it’s not ready for release yet. If somebody really wants a copy of the current incarnation, leave a comment here and be sure to put your email address on the comment form. If you’re worried about spam, diddle your domain name (e.g. “spam_trap”) and leave your real domain name in the comment text.
Ever since I first started using iTunes, I have been trying to figure out what the “Grouping” column was for. I rarely, if ever, saw any data in this column after importing CD’s, and there was no information on this column in iTunes’ help. I finally found this:
grouping (Unicode text) : the grouping (piece) of the track. Generally used to denote movements within a classical work.
in the AppleScript dictionary for iTunes.
Finding this in such an odd spot got me wondering where else I might find documentation for the iTunes Library. Since iTunes pulls CD information from Gracenote (formerlly CDDB), I looked around there. I found lots of useful information on their “Guidelines for submissions” page, such as:
- “Part of a compilation” checkbox (iTunes) is used to indicate that tracks on this disc are by different artists. Turn on the “Part of a compilation” checkbox for all tracks on this CD, and enter the Artist for each track.
- Speaking of the Artist column, what do I put in this column for classical music–composer or performer? See the “Artist Name (classical)” section of Guidelines for submissions.
- Multi-disc releases (”box sets”) should have the disc number added to the end of the Album title, e.g. “The Wall (Disc 1)” for the first disc of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” album. Be sure to enter it exactly as: “«space»(Disc «digit»)”. (I’ve always stripped this off in iTunes because it makes multi-disc albums difficult to work with, but it now appears to be a bug in iTunes.)
- There is quite a long section on First Name versus Last Name of artists, but I don’t think this applies to iTunes. (Too bad, because it looks like it would help quite a bit!)
There’s some very helpful explanations on the Guidelines for submissions page, and I really wish iTunes had a link to it!
I just applied iPod Updater 2006-01-10 on my iPod, and now it’s telling my that I have to use the plug-in charger (vs my USB port) before it will function. WTF?!? This thing was almost fully charged before I updated it, and now I can’t use it at work or on my ride home because I don’t normally carry around the wall charger. GRRR!
My iPod is a 20 GiB color-display model. There is no mention on Apple’s iPod Updater page about needing the wall-wart charger for this update.
In this post I lamented the fact that I couldn’t realistically use my iPod Shuffle to listen to podcasts. Well, I finally broke down and bought 
a “real” iPod to give podcasts another try.
I’m listening to Mark Johnson’s Boardgames To Go podcasts, trying out the features I wasn’t able to access with my iPod Shuffle. I beat my head against the wall trying to find out how to place a bookmark using my new iPod until I discovered that this feature isn’t available on non-AAC encoded material. (BGTG is MP3 encoded.) To find out which encoder was used for a podcast, control-click (or right click) on the podcast in iTunes and select the “Get Info” or “Properties” item. To change an MP3 file into AAC, select the “Convert to AAC” item from the same menu. My PowerBook G4 does this conversion about 18-20 times faster than real-time, but even so it takes 2-3 minutes to convert each episode. (I foolishly selected all 29 episodes for conversion–18.4 hours of material took almost exactly an hour to convert.) I made sure that I sync’d an AAC-encoded podcast and started playing it, but I still couldn’t find any way to bookmark it using the iPod. 
I think I’ll just post this in it’s current state, because I’m getting a little frustrated.
I’m still waiting for a microphone for my iPod, so I can’t even try making audio notes about podcast content. I’ll put some more notes up when I get to that stage, hopefully in a few days.
I had to reset my iPod while fiddling with it. (In fact, I’ve had to reset it relatively often since I started listening to podcasts.) I found this site, with instructions for resetting a “white iPod”, which didn’t work for me. I tried the iPod Mini instructions, which did work. I would guess that the distinction isn’t white vs colored, but rather how new the model is. I have one of the newer color-screen iPods. Anyway, here are the reset instructions which work for it:
- Turn the hold switch on, then off.
- Hold down the menu and select buttons for a few seconds, until the Apple logo appears.
One more thing I want to include on this post is a link to podsites. I haven’t spent much time on this, but it looks potentially interesting, and I’d like to come back to it later.
If you look at my archives, you can see that I just recently started blogging (and reading blogs). So I missed this post on Acetylene.net. Zeno’s comment mentions listening to podcasts with an I-pod Shuffle. I’ve tried this before, and it didn’t work very well, for the following reasons:
- With the Shuffle, you can’t “bookmark” a podcast. If you’re only listening to a 5-minute podcast, that’s not a big deal. But I was trying to listen to (for example) The O’Franken Factor, which is several hours long. I usually don’t have a chance to listen to the whole show at one sitting, and hitting “Pause” (and not using my I-pod for several hours) isn’t always an option.
- There’s no way to make notes on a podcast with the Shuffle. I’m listening to podcasts, and hearing cool stuff that I would like to be able to re-visit and/or blog. Unless you hit your stopwatch when you start listening to a podcast, and have pencil and paper handy, there’s no way to make notes on what you’re listening to.
- And finally, Zeno’s complaint: there’s no way to change ratings on the Shuffle.
Don’t misunderstand me–I love my Shuffle! It’s great for listening to tunes on the bike trail, or working in the yard, etc. But for non-fluff podcasts, Zeno had the right idea: do yourself a favor and spring for a higher-end I-pod.
